There are two new and exciting sources of energy I think you would like to know about. Both of the new sources of energy deal with energy that humans create. The first one is using the heat from one building to heat another. While the other one can recharge your cell phones as you walk. I am really excited to see both of them in the real world if they get there.
The heating of another building is being put into place right now in Sweden, they are cutting edge on the environment. The central train station in Stockholm is too hot in the winter time and they have to cool the building in order to make the travelers comfortable. They have enough left over heat to heat 15% of a new office building next to the station. If it works it will be the first building in the world that heats another building. I think that this is a very interesting idea, it expands on the idea of having many buildings being heated by one central plant. If all of the building in Stockholm could be built sharing there heat they could reduce their costs.
Sweden also has trains running on cow manure, a subdivision that collects urine for farm fertilizers and apparently has a fairly good planning policy for 'suburban' growth.
The other interesting idea was created by Canadians what powers electronics from walking. (the team is 1/3 or less Canadian, cbc skews the facts). The device attaches to your knee and when you walk to moves back and forth to create energy. The process transfers 100% of the energy put in to the device into what ever is charging. The part that they do not mention is that it is really heavy and that it take a lot of energy to walk with it anywhere. This is a product that will most likely not be but into the market place for a really long time.
This product does not appear to help make our lifestyle more sustainable. How much energy is being put into making each of these products and is more that energy being kept into the grid because the person does not have to charge their phone the normal way. Sometimes I feel that people just look at the end product and what it can do but not what it takes to make that end product. I remember having discussions with somebody about building a new building with recycled materials and make it have a zero carbon foot print. Then we went on talking and we figured out that there was already a building nearby that did all of the uses that they wanted the new building to do. We realized to reduce the carbon impacts of the activities they should not build the new building but just use the original one.
Building sustainable is always an interesting thought, if you build a new building on a greenfield (nothing has been there before), than you are causing urban spreading (sprawl is uncontrolled). On the other hand if you tear down a building to make a sustainable building, then you are destroying a building that you could use. This makes it hard to figure out how to actually develop in the most environmentally friendly way.
I like the idea of new ways to produce power that is not based on oil and gas but at the same time we have to look at these new systems and think what use of them really are?? I also found out that the University of Waterloo has an institute for sustainable energy.
The heating of another building is being put into place right now in Sweden, they are cutting edge on the environment. The central train station in Stockholm is too hot in the winter time and they have to cool the building in order to make the travelers comfortable. They have enough left over heat to heat 15% of a new office building next to the station. If it works it will be the first building in the world that heats another building. I think that this is a very interesting idea, it expands on the idea of having many buildings being heated by one central plant. If all of the building in Stockholm could be built sharing there heat they could reduce their costs.
Sweden also has trains running on cow manure, a subdivision that collects urine for farm fertilizers and apparently has a fairly good planning policy for 'suburban' growth.
The other interesting idea was created by Canadians what powers electronics from walking. (the team is 1/3 or less Canadian, cbc skews the facts). The device attaches to your knee and when you walk to moves back and forth to create energy. The process transfers 100% of the energy put in to the device into what ever is charging. The part that they do not mention is that it is really heavy and that it take a lot of energy to walk with it anywhere. This is a product that will most likely not be but into the market place for a really long time.
This product does not appear to help make our lifestyle more sustainable. How much energy is being put into making each of these products and is more that energy being kept into the grid because the person does not have to charge their phone the normal way. Sometimes I feel that people just look at the end product and what it can do but not what it takes to make that end product. I remember having discussions with somebody about building a new building with recycled materials and make it have a zero carbon foot print. Then we went on talking and we figured out that there was already a building nearby that did all of the uses that they wanted the new building to do. We realized to reduce the carbon impacts of the activities they should not build the new building but just use the original one.
Building sustainable is always an interesting thought, if you build a new building on a greenfield (nothing has been there before), than you are causing urban spreading (sprawl is uncontrolled). On the other hand if you tear down a building to make a sustainable building, then you are destroying a building that you could use. This makes it hard to figure out how to actually develop in the most environmentally friendly way.
I like the idea of new ways to produce power that is not based on oil and gas but at the same time we have to look at these new systems and think what use of them really are?? I also found out that the University of Waterloo has an institute for sustainable energy.
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